The Internet, also referred to as the worldwide web (WWW), has become a mass media whereby content presentation is largely supported by paid advertisements that are added to webpage content. Typically, advertisements are displayed using portions of code written in, for example, hyper-text mark-up language (HTML) or JavaScript that is inserted into, or otherwise called up by, HTML documents (webpages). A webpage typically contains text and multimedia elements, such as images, video clips, audio clips, and the like that are rendered and displayed by a web browser on a display device. Advertisements typically are in the form of multimedia elements.
One of the most common types of advertisements on the Internet is in a form of a banner advertisement. Banner advertisements are generally images or animations that are displayed within a webpage. Banner advertisements are simply inserted at various locations within the display area of the HTML document forming the webpage. A typical webpage is cluttered with many banner advertisements, which frequently are irrelevant to the content being displayed in the webpage because the advertisements are not specifically chosen to match the content. As a result, the user's attention is not given to the advertised content. Consequently, the price for advertising in a potentially valuable area within a webpage is low because its respective effectiveness is low. The low prices result in lower profits for advertisers.